Recording Environment
The biggest problem when recording in people's homes is persistent extraneous background noise. If informants live on a busy road or near an airport, for example, there is usually no way in which a good quality recording can be made. Sometimes moving to another room in the informant's house will enable you to get far enough away from the source of the extraneous noise to make a satisfactory recording. Otherwise the only alternatives may be to try to move to the home of a neighbour, friend or relative, or to ask the informant to come to the collecting institution if better facilities are available there.
A good many minor extraneous noises can be and should be silenced. Clocks, fluorescent tubes, refrigerators and other electrical appliances are most common and can usually be stopped or moved. Dogs and budgerigars should also be 'silenced'. To deal with the noise problem interviewers must carefully assess the environment. Listen! If you can hear noises the microphone can too and they will always sound more distracting and prominent on the recording than they do to the interviewer at the time.
The best rooms for recording are those that contain a lot of soft furnishings and such things as curtains, carpets and rugs. This will usually be the living room. Technically, the bedroom is probably the next best recording area! Rather bare rooms, with a lot of hard reflective surfaces will give the recording an echoey, bathroom-type sound and should be avoided if possible.
Microphones which can be clipped to the informant's clothing are best suited to oral history interviewing requirements (see also Chapter 9). Apart from being small, and therefore unobtrusive, they permit almost complete flexibility in the matter of seating arrangements. You should place the informant and yourself in the most 'natural' setting. If the informant has a favourite or usual chair, that is where he should sit. Place yourself in a position where you are comfortable and can make good eye contact with him. In other words, you should arrange a social disposition and avoid 'staging' the interview.
If you are using a table standing microphone, the easiest way to work is to set up the microphone on a table (over which there is a table cloth or some other soft material) at which the interviewer and informant can sit on fairly upright chairs. Try to avoid easy chairs as these tend to throw the speaker too far back from the microphone to obtain a good recording level.
The recorder itself is best placed out of the informant's view (and never on the same table as the microphone), but in a position where the interviewer can see it easily. This is arranged most simply by the machine and the informant being on the opposite sides of the interviewer, so that his body serves as a screen.
Thus, in selecting your recording environment, there are three main considerations:-
a. Extraneous noise
b. The room acoustic
c. The convenience and comfort of informant and interviewer
Often you will have to compromise, because it will not be possible to meet all three conditions. In such cases, (a) and (c) above are the most important considerations for getting a good quality recording.
